The Ascension Factor

Alyssa had slipped away on a long-term job in the kelp, knowing she could stretch six months of research in wild kelp beds to nine or ten months without any trouble. He'd wanted to be rid of her, she'd sensed that. If he knew she were pregnant he would destroy the child, of this she was sure. He would probably destroy her, too. Not one in ten thousand clones ever got the chance for a baby. Flattery, Alyssa and Mack were very possibly the last living members of their original crew of 3,006, each one the clone of some long-lost donor.

The Broods took him, and Yuri he was called. There were no other children at this kelp outpost, so Yuri spent his first two years undersea with fourteen adults.

Flattery closed his eyes, retreated into himself.

It was just the once, his mind pleaded. Just the time.

"Do you think it's what I expected my body to do?" she asked.

The images stayed on the other side of his eyelids, but her voice came right into his mind.

How would I suspect, you didn't stick around. your work in the kelp.

Now the scenes came inside his head. Flattery watched as he personally "dismantled" Alyssa and he himself performed the transplant to the life support surrogate and severed her brain forever from its body.

"All you have to do is consult the kelp," he heard Mack telling Brood. "You'll have your answer for sure, then. You can follow your genetic line back as far as you have the patience to follow."

"I know who my father is," Brood said. "It's him, Raja Flattery."

In one gigantic twist the foil ripped apart at the cabin seam and the sea burst in on Flattery. When the pieces fell away from him the sphere of light remained, and more images danced across the surface of the sphere. He saw Nevi and Zentz captured at the beach, and Brood's attack on the Orbiter. A panorama of disaster played out for him and he watched his precious Preserve go down in plunder.

All along the coastline huge whips of kelp flung themselves skyward and lit up the sea with their pale green glow.

You have much to learn, Raja Flattery, Alyssa said. You are an intelligent man, perhaps even the genius that you believe yourself to be. Ultimately, that is what will save you.

Something grabbed at his right ankle and he spun away. It grabbed again and held, then pinned his arms when he tried to batter at it with a spare air pack. He was already exhausted, and found himself in a dreamlike state that made resistance more work than it was worth.

As I told you the night you killed me, I don't think you understand the immensity of this being.

Beatriz watched Flattery's memory take over, and he broadcast the entire scene of Alyssa Marsh's separation from her body. Hole screens, viewscreens, kelp beds, the air and sky themselves lit up with Alyssa Marsh's memories of her final encounter with Flattery.

You owe me a body, she said, and she said it in that same flat, emotionless tone that had made her his first pick for this crew a lifetime ago.

The kelp began to enciliate Flattery, to encapsulize him inside a life-support pod. It had been the same with Crista Galli, as it had been with Vata and Duque before her. Beatriz felt the cilia seeking out his blood vessels to adjust his oxygen level and pH. Others would feed him, recycle his wastes and protect him from flesh-eaters. She felt this as she sensed the world through the hylighter's skin.

Flattery had the show, and the whole world was watching.

* * *

So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time.

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

Twisp felt a moment of hysteria play flip-flop with his stomach as a sphere of cool light encompassed the young Kaleb. Twisp had sent a boy upcoast and now a man came back. He had known the boy's father the day he changed from child to man. Suddenly that old sense of loss iced his spine, and he stood a little straighter at the poolside.

Kaleb's a lot like his father, he thought. Obstinate, sure, outraged.

Kaleb's father, Brett, had been outraged at the sight of thousands of fellow Islanders stacked dead in a Merman plaza, outraged that humans would murder children in their beds and parents at their prayers.

An entire Island, sunk!

Twisp had heard about the sinking of Guemes Island, he'd seen holos of the grim rescue scene, but Brett had seen the sledges of limp bodies, heard the rattle in dying throats.

As though picking up his thoughts, the bright surface of the sphere played back some of those moments, far clearer here than in his memory.

Other images played there, too — nebulized, indistinct, as though making up their minds about being. He saw in them replays of the scenes Kaleb fought with his people. He had resisted the majority of his forces who wanted Flattery's blood. They chose to move without him, and Kaleb stood up to them.